Honolulu

Hotels in Honolulu

While Oahu isn't the largest in the Hawaiian chain, the hotel options are plentiful. One of the best hotels in Honolulu is The Modern, Honolulu. Located directly on Waikiki Beach, this sleek hotel is considered one of the city's most sophisticated. Rooms with ocean views start at a reasonable price and there's a full service restaurant and bar helmed by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. Morimoto uses only the freshest ingredients sourced on the island to prepare delicious meals. Another fantastic hotel experience can be found at the Halekulani. This Honolulu hotel is also located on Waikiki Beach and affords views of the volcanoes and mountains across the water. Be sure to inquire about package deals, which are offered if you book several of the room types. Most packages include one or more meals at the on-site restaurant or a treatment at the spa. It's wise to ask any hotels in Honolulu you're interested in about additional fees (such as that popular and pesky resort fee) before booking to figure out whether or not you're actually getting a great deal.

Steps from Waikiki Beach, this 72-room boutique hotel has an elegant Zen-like quality, thanks to acclaimed San Francisco–based furnishings designer Jiun Ho. Guests enter through oversize wooden doors and are greeted by water features and stone sculptures.

Framed by Diamond Head, one of the world’s most climbed (extinct) volcanoes, and with nearly two miles of continuous white sand and palm trees, this iconic beach—over the past 80 years its image has even been printed on tens of thousands “aloha shirts”—is almost always full of tourists and surfer

Iconic, surfer-filled Waikiki—so famous that its image has even been printed on tens of thousands "aloha shirts"—is almost always full of tourists and happy beachgoers. The stretch of sand is widest, about 100 feet, in front of the bright pink Royal Hawaiian hotel.

Service rules at this recently renovated 5-acre Waikiki Beach beauty, which has existed for nearly a century. The Orchid Suite, the newest of the hotel’s premier rooms, made its debut in 2008 (the rest of the guestrooms were updated in summer 2012).

The main draw at this 226-room budget hotel is its exceptional views of both the ocean and Diamond Head (a massive volcanic ash ring that was long ago consolidated into what geoligists call tuff.) Slight upgrades have been made to the oceanfront rooms, but the other standard rooms can have

Located on Kuhio Avenue, just 10 minutes from Kapiolani Park and the Honolulu Zoo and three blocks from the beach, the 93-room, budget Aqua Bamboo and Spa is housed inside a repurposed apartment building.

Oahu classic—fresh from a three-year, $52 million renovation—with thoughtful in-room details (Egyptian-cotton linens; chenille robes; oversize rainfall showerheads). This 1964 colossus benefits from having about it a whiff of retro glamour.

With direct access to Waikiki Beach, the Outrigger Reef on the Beach resort has a decidedly Hawaiian feel, from historic canoe art at the reception desk to a sitting room library stocked with Hawaiian literature and artifacts from the Bishop Museum.

Along with spectacular views of natural blue Pacific and Diamond Head, the hotel showed its eco-commitment with heat pumps and exchangers to recover waste heat for hot water (which saves 50% in gas usage), as well as low-flow toilets.